The Eye of Photography is pleased to announce a new chronicle dedicated to 20th century nude photo books. We entrusted it to Alain-René Hardy, expert in Art Deco, who over the years has become the holder of a very important collection of books, brochures and periodicals illustrated by nude photography, an international reference recognized today by the specialists.
As he explains to us, it was on a crush that he acquired the first volume of this set many years ago, La beauté de la femme by Daniel Masclet [Ill. 1], published in 1933, unconscious then that this purchase was about to engage him in a potentially obsessive quest.
The oldest works he keeps, the Albums d’études de Louis Igout [Ill. 2], date back to the end of the 19th century, the most recent having been published during the first years of the 21st century, such as Nudes by Thomas Ruff [Ill. 3]. Mainly comprising female nudes, this collection is not very open to homosexuality as well as to various fetishes (bondage, sado-masochism, transvestites, etc.) and also excludes pornographic excesses, present since 1970 and currently dominant in this type of editions; it is basically, as we have understood, a collection of aesthetic and art predilection. There are mainly volumes printed throughout the 20th century in the Western world, in France, Germany, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States, without forgetting Czechoslovakia between the wars and Japan. after the war, and various countries such as Hungary, Poland or Italy which, at certain times in their history, were able to loosen the grip of the various censorships which weighed on them to give birth to such publications.
Alain-René Hardy will come back to you regularly, offering you occasional focuses on various subjects suggested by these old documents (many of which cannot be found today), and releasing the resulting knowledge to enrich the history of nude photography. , the history of photography in short. In particular, the following topics will be addressed during the next editions of this section (obviously illustrated with numerous reproductions drawn from the inexhaustible treasure of his collection) enumerated in a list, of course not exhaustive, and with intentional disorder, of which each article is illustrated today with the reproduction of the cover of an emblematic book on this subject:
La photo de nus en Tchécoslovaquie (1919-1939) [Ill. 4]
Premières impressions en couleurs (1937-42) [Ill. 10]
Sous le manteau (brochures coquines des années 50) [Ill. 11]
Quand le Japon s’éveille (1960-70) [Ill. 12]
Les premiers prosélytes français : Bayard et Vignola (1900-1910) [Ill. 13]
Le Figure photography quarterly (Chicago (1950-1976) [Ill. 14]…
So, whether you are a professional, a frenzied collector or a novice, amateur, passionate or simply curious, meet us on January 13th on The Eye of Photography for the first of these chronicles which will be devoted to the mythical Album du 1er Salon international du nu photographique, Paris, 1933.
L'Eye only allows access to the full portfolio for subscribing members. For others, there is partial access and only for one day. It is sometimes possible to Google others either from L'Eye or from the referenced sources. In this case, most have been found but there are some extras shown on the site but not included in the list of illustrations, for example, Ruff's book.
[13Jan23] Album of the 1st International Exhibition of Nude Photography, Paris, 1933
NUS NUS NUS… If an even larger typography had been possible, no doubt it would have been used to tag this album; but, it was downright impossible in this case since these three letters N.U.S. arranged diagonally occupy the entire surface of the cover [Ill. 01]; [Fig. 02], imposing itself imperatively. This huge oversized NUS was also quite provocative in this France at the end of the Roaring Twenties, still prudish despite the naked exhibitions of Joséphine Baker at the Champs-Élysées theater and the reviews at the Folies Bergère or those of the Moulin Rouge galvanized by Mistinguett. Wouldn’t it still be a little today?
Everything was done to catch the eye with this oversized title, ‒ especially mine, while I was antiquing at the Vanves flea market, it encouraged me to open and leaf through this enticing collection. It was love at first sight: everything was magnificent in this album born fifty years earlier: starting with the photos, which are simply beautiful ‒ as well as the bodies, and of a remarkable presence highlighted by irreproachable prints, as much as the neophyte that I was could judge; some undeniably just emancipated from the imitation of pictorial representation, others more inventive in their research into framing, light, contrast, and some even clearly avant-garde, if only through the use of innovative technical processes such as overprinting [Ill. 03], solarization [Fig. 04], or intentional blurring [Ill. 05]…
Taken mostly in studios, but also in the open air for a third of them, the photos reproduced in no particular order, were printed in full page on a strong paper of good quality discreetly tinted, with a technical process, heliogravure, with which I became familiar later, which gently manages strong contrasts between dense and deep blacks and elegant shades of gray. This album of photos, aesthetic rather than erotic, undeniably had many assets to win me over, including an original Japanese binding that assembled it with distinction using a red cord. What a revelation! a dazzle. It was not at all what I had come here to look for early in the morning, but I had money in my pocket and this album which so seduced me was in my hands; how could I resist?… So I went home with my first anthology of nudes, which thus made its entry not into my collection which did not even exist in dreams, but into my library, where it now constitutes the core of what has grown into this now so pervasive set of more than a thousand titles.
But who, however, was this Daniel Masclet (1892-1969) who, with the help of his wife Francesca mentioned in the prologue, had ventured to set up this “premier salon international du nu photographique” hosted during the year 1933 by the famous (at the time) Galerie de La Renaissance on rue Royale? Involved for a long time in photographic creation, this just forty-year-old recognized within the profession, had cut his teeth with the famous Baron de Meyer, appointed eye of Vogue for a whole decade. In contact with this perfectionist esthete, Masclet had integrated rigor and exigency in the shooting as well as in the printing; a lesson that he used in his future evolutions which led him to become, in addition to active animator of his corporation, first and foremost a master of portraiture, and later of landscape. This did not prevent him from also producing a few nudes, eclipsed in his publication, ‒ just like those, rather disappointing, of Moral, as well as those of Verneuil [Ill. 06] whose collection of 24 nude studies, Images d’une femme, had just been published by the young publishing house founded by Robert Denoël ‒ eclipsed, I was saying, by the visions of many of his colleagues, like Louis Caillaud [Ill. 07] stamped with a suave poetic candor.
Very well informed of current creative events, Masclet had invited to his exhibition more than fifty photographers of fifteen different nationalities, among whom, in addition to France, the most strongly represented were Germany, the United States and Great Britain, without omitting certain central European countries, such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia, where photographic research was remarkably active, for which we owe here a few shots by Drtikol (Ill. 08), extraordinarily inventive in his use of geometry and, with a clearly different intention, that of Lázló Moholy-Nagy (Ill. 09).
One cannot fail to wonder retrospectively about the selection of Masclet (dependent, it is true, in part on material considerations of which we are unaware) he had at the same time requested nudes from compatriots specialists in the genre, almost forgotten today, such as Verneuil and Caillaud as well as Marcel Meys (to whom I will devote one of my next columns), but he had also neglected, fortuitously or intentionally, for reasons not necessarily artistic, confirmed colleagues such as Roger Schall, Emmanuel Sougez, Maurice Tabard and Lucien Lorelle, his Parisian competitor for portraits; even among the foreigners staying in Paris, Germaine Krull and Brassaï, whose careers as photographers had only just begun are notable absences. Nevertheless, he was particularly well informed about photographic news abroad. To which we owe the presence at his exhibition, ‒ and subsequently in this album, of the main American professionals, William Mortensen, George Platt-Lynes (Ill. 10) and Andreas Feininger… But how not to notice the incomprehensible absence of Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston whom Masclet nevertheless worshiped later.
Certain well-known actors from the English scene at the time had also been invited, among others Bertram Park, author with his wife Yvonne Gregory of numerous publications illustrated by nude photography (The beauty of the female form, Routledge, 1934), Bernard Leedham, Fred Peel (Ill. 11) and Maurice Beck (Ill. 12), in charge during the 1920s of the photographic department of English Vogue, for which Masclet revealed his keen inclination through numerous reproductions. A copious representation of the bubbling German school had been selected (although the first world war had only been over for fifteen years) including, in addition to Bruno Schultz (Ill. 13) and Alfred Grabner (Ill. 14) who will publish for one an introduction, the other an anthology of the nude at the end of the decade, the essential Perckhammer (Ill. 15), present in all the collective nude brochures published under the Weimar Republic. Franz Fiedler, author a few years ago of the beautiful portfolio of Künstlerische Aktaufnahmen (Artistic nudes; Berlin, c. 1925) is unfortunately not represented here at the height of his talent. We also note the presence of the Berliner Hans Robertson (Ill. 16), misunderstood in France, wrongly as our illustration proves, ending with Z, the modernist photographer Willy Zielke (Ill. 17), a follower of Neue Sachlichkeit, who in turn published after the Second World War a brief but incisive introduction to nude photography.
Browsing through this picture book “à la gloire du corps humain” (“to the glory of the human body”), as French naturists would soon express themselves, is a joy that those who have had the privilege of doing so will not forget. However, this publication was not a real success with the general public (it was still new during the 1970s), but on the other hand its impact was significant in the world of photography, and barely two years later, the Forme editions hastened to publish under the title Formes nues a competing volume on the same subject, of the same size, with the same layout, presenting numerous analogies with that of Masclet, but above all significant differences which can be explained in this formula: Formes nues (Ill. 18) constitutes the unquestionably radical “new vision” of the rather conventional edition (according to the severe judgment of Christian Bouqueret) of La beauté de la femme; what is metaphorically represented by the confrontation of the helical metal binding of one against the assembly by cotton ribbon of the other.
It would be instructive to systematically compare the content, but that would take us too far today; we will come back to it one of these days.
Again the full set of images was only available to subscribers and the subset only for one day to freeloaders such as me. Some of the other images were to be found on a Google search, otherwise representative images are shown. Some bonuses arose where additional photographs were found from specified publications.
Set 2 - This is an attempt to assemble those not available on the L'Eye web page for a day. The L'Eye list is:
11. Fred Peel. Bas-relief. Pl. 90
12. Maurice Beck. Danseuse. Pl. 72
13. Bruno Schultz. Sur la dune. Pl. 16
14. Alfred Grabner. L’eau basse. Pl. 73
15. Heinz von Perckhammer. Dans les hautes herbes. Pl. 63
16. Hans Robertson. Le bain. Pl. 44
17. Willy Zielke. Croix. Pl. 29
18. Couverture de Formes nues, édn Forme, 1935
for 13 Schultz, 14 Grabner, and 15 von Perckhammer, the original images were found in Google.
The Fred Peel was not found, but a striking alternative is shown, The Vase and the Maid, 1935, found on dantebea.
A likely candidate for the Beck
Danseuse was found on liveauctioneers.com.
Hans Robertson's Le bain was not found. Robertson photographed many dancers and one such image is shown. Found on Mutual Art on a [age describing a 2008-9 exhibition of Robertson's work at the Berlinische Galerie, it is not named.
Willy Zielke's Croix was found on invaluable.com.
These are shown as Set 2.
The front cover of Nude Forms, 1935, found on eBay and this also provided the images from the publication shown as Set 3.
Both Hardy articles are headed with the cover of NUS, 1933, Daniel Masclet's album of the 1st International Exhibition of Nude Photography, Paris. The searches for Part 2 found a nice copy of this at pbagalleries.com, including three images from the contents. These are shown as NUS (Set 4). It should be possible, with enough effort, to reconstruct the whole volume, but I won't. It is described in vialibri.net as,
Daniel MASCLET
Nus, la beauté de la Femme. Album du premier salon international du nu photographique. Paris 1933.
MASCLET. Daniel Masclet, Paris, 1933. 96 pages + table des planches. Album tiré à l occasion du premier salon international du nu photographique à Paris en 1933. 1 volume in-4, relié par un cordon bordeaux. 96 reproductions de très belle qualité de photographies en noir et blanc réalisées par 54 photographes dont Aegerter Christian, Albin-Guillot Laure, Baccarini, Maurice Beck, Boris Nickolas, Boucher Pierre, Caillaud L., Capstack J., Dannatt Keith, Davis Frank, Drtikol, Dudley-Johnston J., Evansmith, Feiler Franz, Feininger Andreas, Fiedler Franz, Gilchrist, Grabner Alfred, Hammond Walden, Hanna Forman, Harren Ludwig, Hoinkis Ewald, Hoppé E.-O., Hurault Charles, Landau Ergy, Leedham Bernard, Leonetti Carlo, Manassé, Masclet Daniel, Meyere Jan de, Meys Marcel, Moholy-Nagy, Moral Jean, Mortensen William, Orne Harold, Park Bertram, Pecsi, Peel Fred P., Perckhammer H. Von, George Platt Lynes, Ray Man, Richardson-Cremer, Robertson Hans, Denes Ronay, Sacchi Pietro, Schultz Bruno, Schuwerack J., Sussmann Walter, Szollosy Kalman, Verneuil, Weller Peter, Yva, Zielke Willy, Zych Alois. Bel ouvrage en bon état, de très légères salissures sur la couverture. La qualité des photos est remarquable. [Attributes: Soft Cover]
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The Eye of Photography is pleased to announce a new chronicle dedicated to 20th century nude photo books. We entrusted it to Alain-René Hardy, expert in Art Deco, who over the years has become the holder of a very important collection of books, brochures and periodicals illustrated by nude photography, an international reference recognized today by the specialists.
I renounce, ‒ momentarily, the very extensive and perilous presentation on female nude photographers during the interwar period that I had envisaged for this second column; it would have required more time than I have to give my prose and illustrations on time. I am therefore finally going to offer you an investigation, admittedly on a smaller scale but quite interesting, which has the advantage of being perfectly circumscribed, to meet the Count of Clugny, a fascinating amateur from the beginning of the 20th century. appreciated then and fallen into oblivion. Quite wrongly. Little is known about him, but eventually, thanks to Internet, some persistent and in-depth research will largely bring him out of his incognito.
The first time that, by chance, I noticed ‒ and greatly appreciated his photos, it was while leafing through one of my last purchases, a superb German publication from the beginning of the 20th century, entirely devoted (texts and photos) to the feminine nude. Published in 1904 in Stuttgart by the art publisher von Klemm & Beckmann, the five volumes of this series of “Weibliche Grazie” (Feminine Grace) constitute, thanks to the care given to their production, a product of undeniable luxury. ; everything contributes to it, from the elegant typography imposed on a beautiful laid paper to the photographic plates printed in duotone laminated on a strong colored Canson and protected by serpentes discreetly decorated with a pattern; to the refinement of the Japanese binding using a different colored ribbon for each volume (like the color of the cover). Provided by Bruno Meyer, art historian, photography enthusiast and author of studies on the nude, this enviable collection includes a total of 100 shots borrowed from the recent achievements of some of the most notable French and German photographers, thus providing a very informative of recent developments in artistic photography, particularly nude photography at the dawn of the 20th century.
Are thus highlighted two pillars of the Photo-club de Paris, René Le Bègue and A[chille] Lemoine, as well as Guglielmo Plüschow cousin and initiator of Baron von Gloeden and Hermann von Jan of Strasbourg, whose reputation was then growing. In addition, the second volume of this anthology [Ill. 1] also offered four photos of Graf (Count) C. de Clugny which conquered me both by the originality and the modernity of a look imbued with influences that evoke Rimbaud from Le Bateau ivre and Les Chants de Maldoror as well as surreal premonitions.
T
he first board [Ill. 2 & 3] indeed represents a young naked woman in sandals of leather straps in the antique style lying arms crossed under her head on the stony ground of a cave (interpreted as marine by some) her long hair scattered behind her head. It is neither a decor nor a usual posture in nude photography of the time, generally carried out partly in a studio, partly in a natural environment, ‒ the island of Herblay, for example, as did the group of “nudists” from the Photo-club de Paris‒; singularity here increased by the absence of obvious pictorialist treatments, in particular by retouching with gum bichromate.
The recognition of Clugny’s talent represented by this insertion is corroborated by three additional plates, two of which are in the same rock spirit; and the tendencies that we had noticed are confirmed and developed by the photograph on plate 11 [Ill. 4] for which the photographer, director, has laid his model down on a rock; undressed and abandoned, her back hugging the rough shape of the rocks, right arm dangling backwards, hair trailing to the gravel of the ground, like an Andromeda promised to a monstrous appetite… It is nevertheless not superfluous to underline that this motif, so singular, had been experienced long before him by his colleague Le Bègue [Ill. 5], the two shots, which Georges Arlaud remembered with the “Cariatide” from his “Nude studies” (1930), being almost similar in their content and treatment. Be that as it may, I was immediately seduced, even subjugated, by this daring way, of an almost sado-masochistic eroticism, of confronting by combining them, the tender and the hard, the hot and the cold, the soft curves and rough asperities, to which we owe these strong and provocative images.
A photo rather different in spirit, to be compared to the aesthetics of naturist spirit implemented by French nude photographers and many German practitioners, such as Schmidt and von Jan, then features a sylvan nymph, modestly draped in a muslin artfully arranged, threading her way through a thick wood between an enormous tree stump and a massive mossy rock [Ill. 6]; while plate n° 5 shows a young woman with long brown hair (it is also quite possible that it was the same model who posed for these four shots) standing attentively in a natural opening in the wall like thickness of a rock [Ill. 7].
There is more, this set of four photographs (of which we remain in the dark about the printing process) will be very precisely reused during the following years, in a very short period of time, by different publications, One in Germany ‒ Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körpers (The beauty of the human body) [Ill. 8] published in Stuttgart in 1905, followed by its second edition greatly increased by numerous articles and photos (Dusseldorf, v.1906) [Ill. 9], the other French, entitled “Feminine grace” [Ill. 10] published in 1907 by the Librairie technique et littéraire, compilation in hardcover of the 24 thematic issues of a bi-monthly review put into circulation throughout the year 1906.
The comparison between the reproductions of these three works tells us a lot about the commercial and artistic status of photography at this time, particularly in relation to printed publication. Because if the author of the photo is generally indicated, this is still not always the case, hence a lack of recognition of the authorship of the work. In addition, from one book to another the photos are sometimes cropped in width and/or height, or worse, reversed left/right, an undeniable betrayal of the creator’s intentions, and may have different titles (Marine Wreck of on one side, Dead on the other), or even captions due to the editor’s whim “Thin woman with a beautiful, very pronounced lumbar hollow”, where the others simply title “In the cave”. The quality of the reproductions, moreover, generally acceptable, presents however notable differences due to their variable dimensions, the skills of the photoengraver and the care of the printer and especially the type of reproduction used: as can be seen by comparing the same illustrations in the four collections, the first edition of Schönheit, which uses a duotone process, offers images with much more sharpness, more contrast and ultimately a greater presence, which give it in this respect an undeniable qualitative superiority.
From this point of view, the last work to reproduce photos of our photographer in which we will be interested, which actually appeared before (the beginning of 1902) all those previously mentioned, are technically very disappointing because of the smallness and mediocrity of the illustrations. But this study by C[harles] Klary, “La photographie du nu” [Ill. 11], (accessible on Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3410331d/f55.item.zoom ), very rich in terms of information, very opportunely completes our knowledge of the creations of Charles de Clugny.
There is indeed no reason to be surprised that this Parisian publisher specializing in photography assiduously frequented the exhibitions of the Photo-club in which de Clugny participated and was thus able to obtain easily and without intermediary the five photographs which illustrate his presentation. . If we find there some of the photos that will later be taken up by the German publishers, such as that on p. 39 (unfortunately inverted [Ill. 12], the author also offers three unpublished shots of Clugny, unknown elsewhere, which make it possible to better understand the subjects, the tastes and the inspiration of the count. This is how he reproduced the visions of a disheveled nymph jubilantly soaring “into the air” [Ill. 13], from “Repos de la bacchante”, lying naked on a rock surrounded by nature [Ill. 14] her abundant hair covering the ground; or the unnamed study of a naked woman, with her pelvis modestly veiled, leaning not against a rock, but against the rough trunk of a mighty forest [Ill. 15]. Everything here confirms the imperious attraction for the meeting of opposites, the visual signature of this original creator whose biography I will develop in my next talk.
Alain-René Hardy
livredenus.hardy@gmail.com
Bibliography:
Weibliche Grazie. 5 Klemm & Beckmann ; Stuttgart, 1904 ; 40 pp. d’études de B. Meyer et K. Wahr alternant avec 20 pl. de ph. contrecollées sur fort papier gaufré de couleur protégées par serpente imprimée. 27 x 20 cm. Relié à la japonaise par ruban sous couverture en papier fort gaufré de couleur. Photos de R. Le Bègue, H. von Jan, A. Lemoine, G. Plüschow. C. de Clugny (vol. 2). Chaque volume a une couverture et des supports de planches de couleurs différentes
Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körper Klemm & Beckmann, Stuttgart, 1905, 152 pp. de texte (études de G. Fritsch, Daelen, B. Meyer,…) et une centaine de photos N&B (dont une sur 4 en pl. page). 28 x 19,5 cm. cartonné sous toile bleue à bords biseautés ; titre gaufré à l’or. Dans son emboîtage d’origine titré. Photos de R. Le Bègue, C. de Clugny, Freytag, H. Hildenbrand, H. von Jan, A. Lemoine, G. Plüschow, O. Schmidt, A. Schneider
Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körpers. 2e éd. Ulrich & Steinbecher, Dusseldorf, d. (1906) ; 315 pp. de texte (études de G. Fritsch, Daelen, B. Meyer, J. Kirchner, G. de Téramond…) et 322 photos N&B dont beaucoup en pl. page (40 au total). 30,5 x 22,5 cm ; relié sous couv. toilée bordeaux à bords biseautés ; titre à l’or avec un médaillon allégorique gaufré doré.Photos de R. Le Bègue, C. de Clugny, Freytag, H. Hildenbrand, von Jan, A. Lemoine, G. Plüschow, O. Schmidt, A. Schneider ; Bataille, Cominetti et Agelou
La beauté Librairie artistique et littéraire, Paris, s.d. (1907). 384 pp. de ph. N & B à raison de deux par page, et de 4 ph. pl. p. par livraison précédée d’un texte de 2 pages au début de chacun des 24 chap ; 26 x 18,5 cm, relié éditeur en toile crème avec lettres dorées et une photo de nu imprimée en noir. Les photos ne sont pas du tout créditées ; mais elles sont en grande partie issues de “L’étude académique” de Vignola et d’éditions allemandes. notamment J. Agélou, Schneider , Plüshow, de Clugny, Le Bègue, Lemoine et Büchler.
Klary. La photographie du nu. C. Klary édr, Paris, 1902 (2e éd. 1906). 56 pp. d’études diverses sur le nu et 90 repr. de photos N & B. A la fin, nombreuses publicités relatives au matériele et fournitures photographiques. 28,5 x 20 cm ; broché sous couverture souple. Index p. 56 . Photos de Bergon, Boissonnas, de Clugny, Demachy, von Jan, Le Bègue, Plüschow, Puyo, O. Schmidt, Traut, Vignola
LÉGENDES DES ILLUSTRATIONS
Couverture du tome 2 de Weibliche Grazie. 5 Klemm & Beckmann ; Stuttgart, 1904 ; 27 x 20 cm.
Planche 1 de Weibliche Grazie recouverte de sa serpente imprimée
In der Grotte, de C. de Clugny ; pl. 1 du tome 2 de Weibliche Grazie.
Strandbeute, ph. de C. de Clugny ; in Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körpers. Klemm & Beckmann, Stuttgart, 1ère éd., 1905
René Le Bègue. Sirène, photo exposée au salon du Photo-club de Paris en Repr. dans Die Kunst in der Photographie, Berlin, 1900 et par M. Poivert, Le pictorialisme en France, 1992. Waldnymphe, de C. de Clugny ; repr. in Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körpers. 2e éd. Ulrich & Steinbecher, Dusseldorf, s.d. (1906)
Nu dans la percée, ph. de C. de Clugny ; in Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körpers. Klemm & Beckmann, Stuttgart, 1905
Couverture de Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körpers. Klemm & Beckmann, Stuttgart, 1ère éd., 28 x 19,5 cm.
Couverture de Die Schönheit des menschlichen Körpers. 2e éd. Ulrich & Steinbecher, Dusseldorf, s.d. (1906). 30,5 x 22,5 cm
Couverture de La beauté Librairie artistique et littéraire, Paris, s.d. (1907). 26 x 18,5 cm
Couverture de Klary. La photographie du nu. C. Klary édr, Paris, 1902 (2e éd. 1906). 28,5 x 20 cm
“Morte”, de C. de Clugny ; repr. p. 39 de C. Klary. La photographie du nu. (Voir les Ill. 4 & 5)
“Dans les airs”, de C. de Clugny ; repr. p. 41 de C. Klary. La photographie du nu
.
“Le repos de la bacchante”, de C. de Clugny ; repr. p. 14 de C. Klary. La photographie du nu.
“Etude”, de C. de Clugny ; repr. p. 34 de C. Klary. La photographie du nu.
Nude Photo Books in the 20th Century by Alain-René Hardy – Part IV
ALAIN-RENÉ HARDY MAY 18, 2023Print Friendly, PDF & Email
It was my inveterate curiosity that, during my last column, led me into an investigation that was far too serious and in-depth compared to my initial intentions; moreover, it would not be finished since I committed myself at the end of this focus devoted to the fascinating photos of Count Charles de Clugny to put black on white, – extreme contrast which is not the prerogative only of photographers, since the writers also devoted themselves to it when the ink of their prose concretely smeared their paper support, … to put black on white therefore, the biography, at least what we know of it, of this amateur with cave dwelling inclinations, so endearing by his attraction for the irresistible contrast between the delicate and vulnerable roundness of female flesh and the irreducible hardness of the sharp rocks with which he likes to represent them.
At a distance from these too serious exercises, it will therefore be appreciated to indulge today in much more pleasant considerations and to discover together to what extent, contrary to the image of seriousness that it gives us, nude photography can sometimes turn out to be whimsical, sometimes entertain us with bizarre and even wacky representations, ‒ moderately serious in any case. This from the publication of the first collections of nude photos published on plates in Leipzig at the end of the 19th century. by serious Herrs Doktors who abandoned their seriousness of professional architects at the door of the studio. But, should we really consider Max Koch and Otto Rieth as the authors of Der Act (The Nude), ‒ I mean as the photographers who manipulated the room where the images of the future book were made, or were they not- Rather, they were not essentially scenographers, inventing architectures of bone and flesh using platforms (Ills. 1, 2 & 3) and 120° mirror devices (Ills. 4, 5) which allowed them to obtain with a single model three subjects, under different points of view and various postures in appearance, an illusionist combination where, before the distortions of Andre Kerstesz (we will eventually get there) the mirror plays the leading role.
This large portfolio of 100 plates printed in rotogravure in 1895 and probably marketed in deliveries of 10 plates, was not, judging by its rarity today, published in large quantities; it is only very exceptionally complete (no more than seven copies listed worldwide in public libraries) and collectors who only own a few disparate plates are already very happy.
More widespread are the naked fantasies that Émile Bayard (1868-1937) offered on the newsstands from October 1902, in weekly deliveries of 4 large plates 38 cm high with an illustrated soft cover (Ill. 6). Nothing predestined this polygraph specialist in the history of the fine arts and the applied arts, ‒ author in particular of the famous popular series The art of recognizing…, to invest himself so fully in “The nude aesthetic. The man , women, children. Album of unpublished artistic documents from nature (E. Bernard, printer-publisher, Paris), except that it was accepted at the time that nude photographs were a precious creative tool. for artists. Often 7-8 pictures per plate, cut chisel like and laid out haphazardly, framed by dark circles or imprisoned in cartridges of irregular shape (Ill. 7), sometimes very unattractive, whose general physiognomy moreover varied during the publication, it was a gynecium of several hundred women (including some frequently represented) accompanied by men, old men, children, boys and adolescent girls, and … some fabulous animals , which was offered for one franc (Napoleon) to the concupiscence of our great-grandfathers.
From the fourth year, the double page consisting of the back cover was very frequently occupied by a single photo comprising up to eight, or even ten, nude models (Ill. 8) grouped together in stagings of unbridled imagination based on heavy conventional analogies, where kitsch competed with comical, enigma: “A dominant idea came to us, that of a culminating point from which a group would unfold. she was able to climb (Ill. 9) – she quickly became dizzy and soon gave way to another more intrepid one, then, successively, the rungs below were filled with models, “dressing” the ladder, looking for ramifications, a homogeneous mass which finally, by dint of trial and error, was achieved.” (commentary by É. Bayard, Le nu esthetic, no. 44, p. 31, May 1906). Thus we are led from this ascent to some height of eight on the scale (of virtue?) to the weak assault opposed by a troop of unvindictive virgins to the abduction of a not very shy centaur himself (Ill. 10) or the simulacrum of a beautiful young woman’s crucifixion (Ill. 11), almost radiant at this prospect which would have carried Sade to ecstasy, to wonder whether, in these hundreds of pages where women rode junky lions or navigated on pasteboard dolphins (Ill. 12) borrowed from Méliès’ accessories store, nude photography such as the Bayard practice is more than a pretext to achieve, ‒ to give a real and concrete form, a delirium mixed with mythology and religiosity, emblems and symbols. “In the spread format of our two immaculate pages, Fame has spread its white wings (Ill. 13). This symbolic figure salutes both our success and our efforts.” (Le Nu esthetic, n° 37, p. 4, Oct. 1905).
That said, there is something bewitching, absolutely staggering even, in the extravagance, the eccentricity accumulated here with a certain innocence during the sixty weeks of publication. Bayard was not a photographer; he was hardly an artist either; on the other hand, he was an inexhaustible talker, a remarkable analyst who did not hesitate for a moment to direct his reflection in all directions, reflections on nudity, on the differences between the sexes, on feminine beauty…, to keep his readers in suspense on the four weekly pages of too-thin newsprint given over to his dissertations. As well as looking, it gave something to read, to think about. This, among other things, justifies our interest and our consideration for him.
The photographer, E. Forestier, of whom our ignorance is total, was no more an artist, just a cameraman. A few pages leafed through at random will suffice to convince you of this: the negligence of the sets, the backstage areas visible to the spectator, variously cluttered, the floors lined with crumpled rugs, the models photographed, certainly very diverse, but sometimes unsightly, miserly with awkward and heavy postures, all this testifies to a carelessness and a laxity that is simply appalling; well likely in any case to arouse the indignation of a Bouguereau, a Gérôme, painters so neat and demanding, of whom Bayard nevertheless never ceased to claim issue after issue on the covers of his publication!
Sold in weekly deliveries, ‒ at an affordable price as a result, Le nu esthetic was widely distributed, all the more so as its publisher put on the market annual (and even biannual) compilations grouped under a very beautiful embossed cardboard portfolio, enhanced with gold (Ill. 14), still very pleasant. Relegated to the attic during the interwar period, these outdated magazines were dispersed after the second war and, during the 1960s, strollers on the quays of the Seine, a little dumbfounded, could acquire for a few pennies in the boxes of booksellers some of these sheets which have become astonishing vestiges of 1900 eroticism.
Fragments at least of the Nude aesthetic appear in all curiosa collections, at least those of collectors who show a historical, sociological or aesthetic interest (?) for the 1900 nude. Because the plates were no longer paginated after the second year of publication, it has become almost impossible to find the initial order of those which over the years (more than a century!) have inevitably been downgraded by manipulation. Also, complete copies ‒ and in an order close to the original, are very rare, not to say exceptional (even that of the BnF has gaps and some passages in disorder) and can therefore reach prices a little demanding.
Except in Germany, collections of printed nude photos were not very abundant before 1920; even less those which, like the Nu esthetic, were marked with the hallmark of fantasy and whimsy; and it will be necessary to wait a quarter of a century for this state of mind to manifest itself again, under the influence of, among others, Dada and surrealism, nude photography will take on an absolutely explosive unbridled creativity. This will be the subject of my next column.
Alain-René Hardy
L’ivre de nus
livresdenus.hardy@gmail.com
L’Œil de la Photographie (2022) Nude Photo Books in the 20th Century by Alain-René Hardy [online]. loeildelaphotographie.com. Available from https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/nude-photo-books-in-the-20th-century-by-alain-rene-hardy/ [Accessed 30 December 2022].
Hardy, Alain-René (2023) The Beauty of Woman [online]. loeildelaphotographie.com. Available from https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/the-beauty-of-woman-by-alain-rene-hardy [Accessed 13 January 2023].
Hardy, Alain-René (2023) Nude Photo Books in the 20th Century : Le Graf von Clugny by Alain-René Hardy [online]. loeildelaphotographie.com. Available from https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/nude-photo-books-in-the-20th-century-le-graf-von-clugny-by-alain-rene-hardy [Accessed 10 February 2023].
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Page created 30-Dec-2022 | Page updated 21-May-2023
